NEWS
SLEEP & LONGEVITY
Screens or sleep: it’s one or the other
Sleep: a key factor in longevity
N
orwegian research published on 31 March 2025 in Frontiers in Psychiatry
made no significant difference. To improve sleep quality, the researchers recommend cutting down on screen use at least 30-60 minutes before going to sleep.
looked at the impact of screen time on sleep. The study involving 45,000 young adults reveals that spending an extra hour’s screen time before going to bed increased the risk of insomnia by 59% and led to 24 minutes’ less sleep; the type of screen use (social media, films, gaming, etc.)
frontiersin.org
Guénolé Addor is a specialist in anti-ageing medicine who practices in the field of longevity, in which sleep is one of the key ingredients. We spoke to Dr Addor and asked him for some practical tips on how to enjoy a longer, better life.
Sleeping with your favourite pet
Y ou may have specialised in longevity, but isn’t ageing in our genes? Of course, we’re all programmed to age. That said, our lifestyle choices give us some control over how we use our DNA; we can prevent our bodies from self-destructing. Some diseases such as Alzheimer’s and certain cancers are in fact not genetic but metabolic. Having a healthy body, following a balanced diet and getting restorative sleep are all ways of improving our chances of enjoying life for longer. My aim isn’t to force my patients to do anything, but rather to make them the CEOs of their own health. You were formerly an anaesthetist specialising in intensive care; how did you end up going into anti-ageing and longevity? It was actually my experiences in a hospital position that encouraged me to do so. Working nights plus a very heavy workload puts people in a permanent state of jetlag. Experiencing this spurred me to excel in managing my own sleep. At the same time, I noticed that some of my colleagues under similar stress would start to lose weight and become
depressed; I was also struck by how many of my patients’ chronic diseases had emerged due to unhealthy lifestyles. As someone who also plays sport, all this bolstered my conviction that people need to be supported and educated if they are to live and age healthily. How has sport influenced you? I’ve always been interested in human performance, in particular in sports like tennis, cycling, skiing and mountaineering, as well as endurance sports. When I was younger I was quite adventurous; I’ve sailed across the Atlantic and scaled a 7000-metre summit in Nepal. That has helped me more aware that what we do has an effect on our bodies; very early on, I understood the extent to which training, a good diet and sleep are vital – and how unaware many people are of that. As a result, they often suffer from easily preventable chronic diseases. In a day and age when many people think they can learn all they need to know from the likes of Instagram, professional advice and care are more invaluable than ever.
R esearch by the Mayo Clinic in the USA shows that sleeping with pets can improve sleep quality. 41% of the 150 participants in the study reported that they slept better when they had their cat or dog with them because they felt safer, helping the owners fall asleep faster and facilitating restorative sleep. Only 20% of participants said they were woken up by their pet, so it turns out that sharing your bedroom with your cat or dog could well be a key to sleeping better!
With a background as an anaesthesiologist and intensive care physician, Guénolé Addor (45) arrived in Vaud from Brittany. He served as head of clinic at Vaud University Hospital before taking an interest in longevity.
Dream on
E ven in ancient times, understand them as a way into our unconscious. Hippocrates pored over them (combined with the stars) in search of signs of illness. Dreams have inspired poets and artists such as the Surrealists, too, as well as being a constant source of interest in human science – despite which they remain something of a mystery. Ever Socrates saw dreams as the expression of our repressed desires; later, Freud came to since the Victorian era, groups of dreamers have set up ‘dream banks’:
intimate, collective archives that are still studied today in an attempt to understand the times we live in – and our own brains. There’s no exhaustive inventory of dream banks, but the largest are often accessible online; DreamBank, for instance, lists some twenty thousand dreams.
dreambank.net
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